lastly, contrary to what a lot of blueskiers seem to be posting, the idea of trademark having a duty to police is dramatically overblown. patagonia letting pattie be does not meaningfully undermine the strength of its marks or its ability to enforce its marks against others.

Look, I'm trying to get on board with descriptive (vs prescriptive) grammar, but it still bugs me when people use "dice" as a singular. Though not as much as when they try to pluralize it to "dices."

Emerging from lurk to drop the final version of Separation of Copyright Powers, my new explainer on all the legal and historical puzzle boxes surrounding the administration's attempt to take over the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office. A quick summary... 1/ papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

In front of the committee chair is a plaque: "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law." See my potato photo below.

2006: instead of buying CDs, mp3s are how you avoid paying musicians for their work. 2026: instead of streaming, where musicians get paid $1e-6 per spin, buying mp3s is how you pay musicians for their work.

AS SOMEONE WHO GOT NEED-BASED AID TO GO TO U Of C (wait why are we yelling), it's great to see the opportunity extended to more people. I wouldn't be where I am without that financial aid when I needed it.

My biggest Bluesky #FeatureRequest is a filter for screencaps of other social media sites. I know there are people on other sites posting horrible comments, but that's why I'm here and not there. Whatever you're using to autodetect and auto-tag nipples, you can use that to tag X/Truth/... logos.

This is how to respond when your university starts pushing Gemini on you

Ghosts Graphite on paper - 7x10 inches - 2026 #graphiteOnPaper

Some personal news, in song form: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ71...

If you're the editor of a law review please do yourself a favor and google "DOI". They're fabulous and your journal needs them.

this is the secret to foiaball. most journalists are..... let's just say very brusque and sometimes lack social graces. throwing in a few smiley faces every now and then goes a long, long way!

It's worth 12 victory points.

Registration is now open for Professional Development Day: 🔗 dcswa.wildapricot.org/event-6642704 This year’s conference will begin early Saturday, May 9, 2026, at George Washington University, and will end with a happy hour at the Admiral.

The data is in, and yes, more people were playing Dark Side of the Moon as Artemis II passed behind the Moon.

Great news: the biggest problems on Artemis II are the toilet fan fritzing out and a glitch with the email client.

The Congressional Research Service has really upped its visuals. Here are maps of oil and methane production/distribution through the Middle East and environs: www.everycrsreport.com/files/2026-0... www.everycrsreport.com/files/2026-0...

Update from my January 2022 article on working from VR: I'm still working from VR (even now as I write this). I spent $30 on a far more comfortable headband, but otherwise not much has changed. I still often don't know when the sun sets. www.wired.com/story/hours-working-vr-tips/

Despite its flaws and eminently skippable opinion section, a shout-out to The Post for using the right name for Malcom X Park. Accept no substitutions!

People once envisioned a future where DC wouldn't have a ~10 storey height limit.

Hey if you don't care for ssrn but want an explainer on the #CABillionaireTax (now officially Bernie-endorsed!), you can read up here: www.sfexaminer.com/news/politic... (except sorry, you first have to scroll past me, cosplaying as vest-wearing billionaire)

The IC2S2 deadline is right around the corner! We really need more reviewers to make this conference work. I know (I KNOW) you all get a lot of requests but please consider signing up, especially if you submit. It’s just a few abstracts, we’ll keep the review load light. Promise!

A tip for the casual market watchers: The Market doesn't rise or fall on good or bad jobs or inflation reports, it moves on whether the news beat expectations. To understand what The Market is thinking, check, e.g., the Bloomberg consensus forecast ( www.bloomberg.com/markets/econ... ).

We used to call them "puns" and now we call them "dad jokes" and I don't get what happened. Do moms not pun?

It all comes in cycles: in the 1980s there was Depeche Mode— a French name often translated as "fast fashion"—and now we have Taylor Swift.

Strong recommend if you are interested in cosmology. The videos are succinct – most around 6 minutes long – and the explanations are satisfying. Same goes for the "Quantum 101" videos.

People always want practical benefits to theory, so here's one: shorter meetings. Meetings where everybody is going in circles feeling around to express a complex thought are much longer and more diffuse than those where everybody shares a theoretical framework as a reference.

I'm so sick of the little boxes on my laptop

The President of the USA, whom most US voters oppose, is joining with the Prime Minister of Israel, whom most Israeli voters oppose, in attempting to topple the regime of Iran, which most Iranians oppose. It's 2026, and we're still working out the kinks in representative Democracy.

I said what I said.

Scroll the comments for more cartoon characters.

Donald Trump canceled Direct File after giant tax prep companies spent millions lobbying. Why? Because Direct File let you file your taxes for free. So today, I’m introducing a bill to make Direct File the law of the land. And 160 members of Congress are joining me.

Reviewing some old links before deleting my Twitter account I was reminded of "Civil disobedience in scientific authorship: Resistance and insubordination in science" (doi.org/10.1080/0898...) which contains a great table on deciding authorship order:

Just updated the US tax graph at b-k.github.io/1040.js/ , the only visual display of the flow of the tax calculation I've seen out there. Attached: the calculation at its worst; your situation will probably make more sense.

I'm tall enough that checkout security cameras advertise clearly that I'm welcome to steal all I see fit.

This is an example of what logicians call the "No true Scotsman" fallacy.

From The Simpsons, November 2020.

Every year, I check for changes on IRS tax forms, and I get to see all the little improvements most will never notice: better kerning, boldface where appropriate, removing excess italics. It's subtle, but they're living documents under constant revision.

Taxation without representation, you might call it.

Electronics buying tip: if you're in the market for a new Widget RSX, search eBay for "Widget RSX For Parts" to see all the ways it can break.

I wrote you a short history of math in the last century and its implications for how we can write better data analysis code. If you're not a data hacker, there's still interesting stuff there for you, like a deep dive into whether Bertrand Russell caused my birth. codeberg.org/b_k/math_out...

Found tied to the barricade.

Someone please show the man a map in any other projection

I appreciate that coder culture, for all its many failings, has a generally mature attitude toward bugs. You maybe file a bug report, and move on, instead of screencapping and posting to the socials, "look at this idiot who made a fencepost error".

Every year, I do a list of 10 games I loved that year -- this is 2025! My guess is you'll know some of them, and also that you won't know some of them. Please let me tell you about these fine video games!! (Links are mostly to Steam, but some are on console too.) /thread

can't believe economics would just put together a theory that only explains ~33% of total economic growth and just calls the other 66% "productivity" and pretend they understand it. that wouldn't happen in physics - instead of "productivity" they'd have "dark technology"

What does a modern particle experiment look like? Here are some pictures of one under construction: Mu2e at Fermilab. This year, I became a theory member of this experiment. I would like to thank Mu2e co-spokesperson, Robert Bernstein, for showing us the experiment and providing great explanations.🧪

To help you with the acronym soup, CISA is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Among other things, this is the agency tasked with helping states run secure elections.